The new truth: Attention trumps knowledge
The New York Times' Idea of the Day blog recently turned me on to The Edge's 2010 question (fair warning, thinking people can get sucked in and lost in this site too easily): How has the Internet changed the way you think?
As with the Times, so far I've found MIT's David Dalrymple's answer most interesting. He says:
"Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory."
Dalrymple sums up his most important lesson as the ability of an employee to focus will be more important than her knowledge. It's a fair and important point, one meaningful for associations as they staff their organizations and look for capable volunteers.
But I'm intrigued by what this means for associations on a different level. Associations have been creating these bodies of knowledge for some time and have long considered it a critical value proposition. As I and others have said many times before, this particular value proposition is becoming obsolete (if it isn't already). Replacing it, is being the conduit for how people connect with knowledge and other people. Getting credit for that is how associations will be valued.
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Comments
I'm not ready to just on this bandwagon quite so enthusiastically because a profession's body of knowledge is not merely a collection of links and possible untested or unverified tidbits of information. Don't right is represents the consensus of best practices with proven results drawn from diverse professionals with years of experience.
But assuming Dalyrimple is right for the sake of discussion, one possible answer for associations lies within the excerpt you quoted: we teach critical thinking skills, information analysis within a profession or industry, and polish up the association seal of approval for trusted sites and sources of info. We help direct people's attention to trustworthy sources they can filter for their own purposes.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | January 19, 2010 3:46 PM
Association information will not become obsolete. It may just need to be communicated in different ways.
Too many people accept web-acquired information as fact. Much of it is merely opinion (including a lot on Wikipedia) and some is actually false.
Respected sources will still be sought out for verification and validity of information. Associations need to market themselves as those respected sources.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | January 20, 2010 3:31 PM
Sounds to me like both of you hold on to the idea of the predominance of centralized content -- associations as broadcasters, if you will. I think the trend is that associations were once broadcasters, but that the world doesn't turn to broadcasters like they used to. The information connections people make now are so much more widely dispersed. Associations may be a node with more connections than many other nodes, but I don't think we can count on people considering us the center of the spider web anymore--there is no center anymore. The challenge is how to get credit for the direct and indirect connections we spur.
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | January 20, 2010 4:20 PM
Although finding information is transformed, the Internet doesn't do your thinking. It doesn't put together known elements in new ways. It isn't creative.
You say how important focus is. I feel that focus is lost due to communication media. Now we live in an era of continous partial attention. This is more serious than using technology as a library, resource center, portal, or broker. Focus has become endangered. It takes experience and knowledge to know what is important to focus upon and to prioritze most optimally. Liane Sebastian, www.wisdomofwork.wordpress.com
Posted by: Liane Sebastian | January 20, 2010 9:53 PM
Not sure I'm holding on to the idea of broadcaster though I definitely think their will be space for that role for many associations for some time.
But I do see an important role for associations as aggregators, sifters, verifiers, and interpreters of legitimate info.
While I'm very open to considering content from an source, I also appreciate information that has been vetted through a thorough process, particularly by individuals with a discerning expertise I may not possess.
There's a lot of stuff floating around out there, and while some of it is quite good, a decent percentage of it is incorrect, incomplete, inadequate.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | January 25, 2010 6:14 PM